A Chinese citizen who once worked as a software engineer for Google in California was convicted on Thursday of stealing artificial intelligence technology from the company to help him create a start-up in Beijing.
A 12-person jury in San Francisco federal court found Linwei Ding, who was part of a team that designed and maintained Google’s A.I. supercomputer data system, guilty of seven counts of trade secrets theft and seven counts of economic espionage. The verdict followed an 11-day trial.
Mr. Ding could face up to 10 years in prison for each count of trade secret theft and 15 years for each count of economic espionage.
The case is one of several that has surfaced in recent years in the United States against Chinese nationals as tensions between the two countries have intensified over a struggle for technologic supremacy. The U.S. attorney’s office has also brought separate cases against two former Apple engineers; one involves the theft of data and another the theft of secrets from the company’s self-driving car program.
Mr. Ding, who began working for Google in early 2019, quit suddenly in January 2024 — after booking a one-way ticket to Beijing. He was arrested three months later.
During the trial this month in the U.S. District Court of Northern California, the government presented evidence that Mr. Ding, who was known as Leon, stole more than 2,000 pages of confidential company information in 2022 and 2023. Mr. Ding pulled the files from Google’s network and uploaded them to his personal Google Cloud account, the government said. He then pitched investors on funding a start-up that would build an A.I. supercomputer based on Google’s technology, according to the government.
Mr. Ding applied for a program sponsored by the Chinese government known as a talent plan in Shanghai, according to evidence presented during the trial. In the application, he said that he planned to “help China to have computing power infrastructure capabilities that are on par with the international level.”
Mr. Ding’s lawyer, Grant Fondo of Goodwin Procter, said they were disappointed by the jury’s decision.
U.S. attorneys and Google praised the jury, saying the verdict showed the U.S. legal system protects companies against theft.
“The jury delivered a clear message today that the theft of this valuable technology will not go unpunished,” the U.S. attorney, Craig H. Missakian, said in a statement.
Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, said in a statement: “We’re grateful to the jury for making sure justice was served today.”
Tripp Mickle reports on some of the world’s biggest tech companies, including Nvidia, Google and Apple. He also writes about trends across the tech industry like layoffs and artificial intelligence.
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